River Watcher: Zero at Oroville

I had just watched one of those temperature reports showing my hometown of Trenton, Mo., and for a moment the "0" looked like a land elevation figure, but no, it was zero Fahrenheit!

The "0" seemed to be following me around, because up on Table Mountain there it was again! "Well, now is that a zero or an "O?" I mused.

I knew perfectly well it was the symbol for Oroville, structured back in 1929 by the Oroville High School class and the Steadman brothers steadfast effort in making the 87-foot concrete landmark.

The circle figure is quaint in being part of both our number system and one of the 26 letters in our alphabet.

Without those "zeros" to add, the billionaires would have fallen short.

In the Babylonian days and Greek times, they struggled with a placeholder mark after number 9, at first utilizing a space, or wedge marks between sexagesimal numerals, but the breakthrough "0" was claimed by India in the ninth century A.D.

The Greeks struggled with the "How can nothing be something?" idea.

We've come a long way, brother, when in 2013, millions and billions — and trillions — are commonplace! Got your "0" yet?

From zero came the Mean Sea Level (MSL), not meaning "mean" as in vicious, but the average ocean surface level of zero between Mean Low Tide and Mean High Tide. Get the MEANing? From the MSL, land elevations are figured, and Trenton, Mo., that I had mistakenly thought was 0, is actually about 840 feet, although all land measurements have some ups and downs.

The mean elevation for Missouri is 800 feet, with ranges from a 230 low at St. Francis River to a high of 1772 feet at Taum Sauk mountain.

California has an MSL of 2,900 feet, with ranges from - 282 at Death Valley to a high of 14,494 feet at Mount Whitney, which is an exception for a state that borders the sea.

Of the 21 sea-bordered states, California is the only one that doesn't have sea level as a low elevation.

For all of the U.S., Mount McKinley in Alaska is highest at 20,320 feet, and the low is - 282 in Death Valley.

The other "O" is one of the 26 letters in our English alphabet. "O" is from Semitic Ayin "eye," part of a system eventually derived from Latin roots.

To sound an O, you have to pucker your lips in the shape of an O, and that is used in most languages.

Just think! All of this stuff I write, and all of the billions of books and writings of the past, was juggled from just 26 letters, 9 numbers, and a bunch of zeros!

All of the history written by historians, all of the Erle Stanley Gardner mystery stories, all of the novels, science fiction, non-fiction, and countless biographical life stories, all of the natural science books and magazine articles and poetry scrambles — all of the stories written in English — have been created by writers using just those 26 letters. An ultimate creative achievement!

John Muir in his scribble-den writing in long-hand, Robert Ruark in a candle-lit African tent, Henry David Thoreau in his Walden cabin, editor David Little at his computer — they all have confronted a common challenge of assembling thoughts into numbers, letters, words, articles, newspapers, and books to achieve an understandable statement.

It took a little invention and education to put those symbols together to make a communication, but the end result has been a way of communicating with people who are mostly never seen, who are distant comrades in the wake of 26 alphabetic letters, nine numbers, and a zero.